With its latest update for its Unity tablet-friendly desktop,
Canonical, Ubuntu's owner, has introduced Dash, an interface with
an integrated Amazon search engine baked right into the OS.

Now, when users search for a photo of "shoes," they may see ads
for actual shoes. Searching for a Microsoft "Office" document?
Don't be surprised if an offer to purchase season five of "The
Office" comes up with your results.

The new feature is touted as a convenience, but to critics it's a
privacy risk that smudges the line between OS and
adware.

"It's a major privacy problem if you can't find things on your
own computer without broadcasting what you're looking for to the
world," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's blog
said, a sentiment that echoed many technology blogs.

Despite the creep factor, the biggest privacy concern, as the EFF
points out, is the fact that Amazon's servers send results back
to users without encryption, making it possible for someone to
passively eavesdrop on a user's search traffic.

Users seem most upset by the decision to make participation in
the tailored ad program mandatory. A legal notice states that
simply by using Ubuntu, users agree to send their search queries
and IP addresses to a number of third parties, including
Facebook, Twitter and the BBC.

"Unity made me leave Ubuntu behind," commenter DeeZee wrote
underneath a PCWorld article on the subject. "The
same goes for dozens of people I encouraged to install Ubuntu
over the years. I will no longer recommend this ugly and
unfriendly interface."

Ubuntu users can avoid the ad integration by uninstalling
"unity-lens-shopping" in the Ubuntu Software Center and clicking
"remove."